Yesterday, I wrote about how, about six months after my daughter was born, I was getting restless being ‘just’ a SAHM, or a stay-at-home-mum. I had a strong desire to find something to do, an outlet for my mind and creativity, and hopefully make a small amount of cash along the way. I wanted to become a WAHM, a working-from-home-mum.
Of course, the difficulty was to settle on something to do. Initially, I was thinking about crafty stuff. It seemed the obvious thing to do. I spend a lot of time on sites like etsy and pinterest, and I do a lot of knitting, crocheting and other crafts. I know some of my items are good enough to be sold.
The difficulties of this approach were obvious. First of all, there is a very large offering of very high quality handmade products out there. It is difficult to stand out from the crowd and get potential buyers to look at your things to begin with, never mind actually purchase them.
Second, there is the profit aspect of it. The fabrication of marketable items is very, very timeconsuming. Thus, converting potential earnings,when setting a realistic price for my items, to an hourly rate came as a bit of a shock. I wouldn’t even mind that much as I would, in theory, be enjoying the work, but in addition, materials tend to be expensive, making profit margins very small. I considered various options, but in the end, it just did not seem worth the effort. Especially as I know myself; recreating the same item over and over again would become boring very quickly.
I know there is people out there who successfully make money selling handmade items. The best way to do it is to find an item that is relatively cheap and quick to produce, yet appealing to a certain market which you can directly target. I eventually had to accept that this wasn’t going to happen for me. I haven’t given up on the possibility altogether, I’ll keep considering possible products, but for now, I had to look in a different direction.
To be continued with the next step in my journey from SAHM to WAHM….
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